


i will take good care of you / all i ever wanted is here

by braigwen_s



Category: Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23904655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: Recovery from the brink of death takes time.  Will wants to reassure Halt that helping him is not a burden.
Relationships: Halt O'Carrick & Will Treaty
Comments: 14
Kudos: 57





	i will take good care of you / all i ever wanted is here

**Author's Note:**

> if only you would let you / and still i will live here.

“Careful,” called Malcolm, but Will had already rushed up to the cot. Halt glared at them both, and slowly, pointedly, straightened out his legs until he was standing. He made it half a step before his strength gave out, and he toppled towards the ground, cursing. Will stepped forward and neatly caught him, exhaling with the impact.

He lowered Halt back to his cot, and drew back. A scolding was ready on his lips, but the anger in Halt’s face stopped him. He wasn’t angry with Will or with Malcolm, he realised, or even with the circumstances. No, in utterly typical Halt fashion, he was angry with _himself_. For not bouncing back immediately. For taking time to recover. For being weak. 

“Being weak”. Will meant those two words in the literal sense – Halt’s health had been decimated in the last few days. Of course he had a long way to go before he regained his usual strength and stamina. When he’d woken after his miraculous first sleep, Will had himself still been sleeping, but Horace had told him quietly that it had taken more than two watches before he’d been able to lift his head without choking.

But Halt… Halt wouldn’t be looking at it that way. He would think that his physical lack of strength was somehow a mental weakness, too, and one that he was ashamed of. He probably felt guilty, too. He had no right to feel guilty – none of this had been his fault! But Halt could be hard on people like no-one else, and that, Will had learned years ago, extended also to himself. It was selfish of him, to keep hurting himself when he was the only one who minded his weakness.

“Please,” Will said, instead of remonstrating him. He saw Halt soften.

“If you’d oblige, apprentice,” he drawled, “I would quite enjoy sitting in front of the fire.”

Will gave what he hoped was an obliging smile, and helped to hoist him up, leaning heavily on him. Malcolm cleared his throat as he sat down, and Will turned to look at him.

“I hate to interrupt while you’re busy, Will,” he said mildly, “but I do believe Horace is waiting for help to catch breakfast.”

Oh, dear, Halt wouldn’t like the implication that Will was currently the leader of their little band of four. But he just proffered Will a tired frown, and shooed him off with his fingers.

“What are you waiting for, boy? Go!”

He hadn’t called him ‘boy’ like that since the first year of his apprenticeship. Will crouched back down again for a moment, laying his hand on Halt’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

He raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t shrug him off. Will knew that should be something else he looked forward to finishing, something that’s absence would indicate Halt’s recovery, was progressing, but he couldn’t bring himself to dislike it. “I know.”

Ten minutes later, Will returned with Horace in tow, a pail of water balanced on his broad shoulders, and a brace of rabbits on Will’s smaller ones. Malcolm waved at them, grinning, and they both waved back. Horace got to work cooking, while Will’s eyes, automatically, flicked over to where he had last left Halt.

He was there, alright, but he had grabbed, from his pack – or maybe asked Malcolm to – the tunic he’d been wearing when he’d collapsed from Abelard. It had been damaged; first it had torn in the fall, then Will had cut the sleeve open. Halt had it sitting in his lap and his sewing kit in front of him. His hands were shaking, and as Will watched, he cursed under his breath as he missed a stitch and pricked his finger. Will silently crossed over the campsite, and knelt on the grass beside Halt, gently prying the needle and thread from his fingers. His eyes met Halt’s, and he squeezed his hand in his. “Let me help you,” he said. 

If Halt had slapped his arms away, he would have respected that decision, but instead, he slowly relinquished the fabric.

“I’m sorry, Halt,” Will said softly. “I know that you don’t enjoy this.” Being helped by anyone. Showing vulnerability, owing anyone anything. Now that Will knew about his brother and how he’d treated Halt, he thought he could understand why.

“ _I’m_ sorry,” said Halt. “You shouldn’t have to be doing this.”

“I don’t have to, Halt,” said Will. “I could let Malcolm do it, or Horace. But I’m choosing to. Because I care about you.”

“Horace,” called Malcolm, from halfway into a cluster of trees – and when had he gotten there? – “give me a hand over here for a few minutes, will you? I need a strapping young lad like you to hold this down.”

Horace, in the middle of skinning the second rabbit, raised both eyebrows at Will, then grinned and shrugged as he walked off. Now, he and Halt were alone at the campsite. Malcolm, always rescuing the people that Will loved, and then rescuing him too for good measure.

The glint of Horace’s mail disappeared into the leaves, and Will waited several moments. Then, he moved a little closer to Halt. Halt looked at him, raising one eyebrow, then folded his arms together, and leaned his head against Will’s shoulder, closing his eyes.

Will didn’t breathe, for a moment, like he was blending into a tree, utterly still, afraid to startle a woodland creature. He knew he’d been entrusted with something very precious, and that Halt had done it deliberately.

“Just once,” he said softly, “I don’t want to ride away from you.”

Halt’s head jerked upwards, blinking. “Hm?”

Will had thought that he’d been dozing; he’d been talking to himself as much as Halt, and he certainly hadn’t meant for Halt to hear it. But he had, and he wanted to understand, and Will would not withhold him knowledge. He shook his curls out of his face, careful not to move his shoulders, to show Halt that his pause was to gather his thoughts, not to ignore him. “When we fought the Kalkara, I rode to fetch Baron Arald and Lord Rodney. This – when this happened, I rode to fetch Malcolm. Just once, I want to stay, and save you that way instead.”

Halt looked at him for a long time, white scars littered around his weather-beaten brown features. “So long as you don’t sail away.”

Will bit his lip, and Halt reached up. He patted his cheek, gentle and utterly genuine. Will had no idea what to say. He wasn’t used to Halt like this. Like … like any of this.

“When Duncan banished me,” Halt said, his voice scraping in and out from hoarse, quiet speech to a whisper, “I didn’t know it would just be a year. I was going to bring you home.”

Will knew what Halt meant. After he’d rescued him, he’d been going to let him go. But that wasn’t how it would have worked. He was Halt’s apprentice. It wouldn’t be freedom or safety or homecoming, not if Halt hadn’t been going to be there with him. “Halt… my home is where you are. You protected me, you taught me, you gave me a life outside of working on the farms.”

Halt huffed out breath, not in scorn or mockery, but in … surprise? Sentiment? Or maybe it was scorn, but scorn only for himself. Will realised, with sorrow, that Halt didn’t think he deserved what he was telling him. He didn’t think that he was truly what was best for him. “Will.”

“You gave me a future,” he told him, holding his gaze, trying to speak to him like their horses did, a wordless transfer of deep-felt thoughts. He clasped Halt’s wrist, holding his hand. “An infinite present, if you like.” He bit back a sudden laugh at his own wordplay – why did he feel like laughing? None of this was even remotely funny. None of this… none of... 

“I almost blew it, you know,” he said, before he could stop himself from saying so. “I nearly killed Bacari before he talked.” He nearly killed Halt, by omission. “Horace stopped me just in time.”

Halt dismissed this with a scrunch of his nose, but his eyes were trained on Will’s, like he was trying to horse-speak, too. “Horace is an excellent young man, and I’m very fond of him. But he’s not the same as you.” He paused, breathing heavily, and on any other day, after any other near-failed mission, Will would have thought it was emotion. “I suppose I’m trying to say … I don’t want to take your father’s place, but –”

“It’s alright,” said Will. His voice was taut, all of a sudden, and so was his chest, and he couldn’t tell if he had never, ever wanted Halt to say that, or if he had been waiting his entire life for him to. “You never could.” 

Anguished betrayal flashed in Halt’s eyes – he wasn’t yet well enough to hide it. Or maybe Will just knew him that well. He hurried to explain himself, but he was fumbling for the right words and clinging onto his master’s sleeve.

“You’re better, Halt,” he promised him. “My father was in the first few months, maybe the first year, of my life. I don’t remember him at all … how can I love someone I don’t remember? I used to think he was a _knight_ , for pity’s sake – all he’s ever been is an ideal. But you. You – how can you take the place of an ideal? You – Halt, you’re real, and you’re _amazing_ , and you’re – and you’re _alive_.” He gasped in a great sob, and damn it, damn it, he started crying, his own tears scalding his cheeks as Halt pulled him close and hugged him tight. Halt was shaking violently, and Will looked up at him in terror – but Halt was crying, too, he was just trembling from his own sobs. Will melted back into his arms.

Halt said something back, but his voice was so hoarse and disrupted it took Will at least a second to work out: _there, there_.

“I love you, Halt,” he managed.

Halt had never been one for expressing affection verbally. Will had come to understand shoulder-pats and embraces, and acts of service like proffered coffee, as the closest he would get to a declaration in return. But Halt was gasping in for breath, and Will pulled himself together enough to shift their hug, so that Will was supporting him, helping him to breathe properly. Halt indicated his thanks with a squeeze of his fingers, and then he spoke. “I love you, too.”

Will was pretty sure the trees had never been so green, in the whole history of Araluen.

**Author's Note:**

> toss a comment to your author?


End file.
